Ricky Gervais defends jokes on Nazi victim Anne Frank

The British star of The Office said on US television her persecuted Jewish family hid from the Nazis because they did not want to pay rent. He added that the Nazis must have been “stupid” not to have found the teenager — murdered in a concentration camp — sooner.

Gervais, 50, wrote in today’s Jewish Chronicle about “some people confusing the subject of a joke with the joke’s real target. I’ve had that routine nearly 10 years.

“It is about the misunderstanding and ignorance of what is clearly a tragic and horrific situation. My comic persona is that of a man who speaks with great arrogance and authority but who along the way reveals his immense stupidity.”